A research-knowledge system (ARKS) for storing, managing, and modeling knowledge from the scientific literature

Nursing knowledge and nursing data are the foundation for nursing practice. Domain knowledge that is stored in the literature of nursing and related disciplines, if not in memory, needs to be available to nurses during the process of clinical decision making. Although the electromechanical technology for delivering knowledge is available, conceptual technology lags far behind. An informatics solution to the conceptual problem is provided by knowledge engineering, the branch of informatics that addresses such problems by developing methods for restructuring knowledge from one form into a form that is more useful. The purpose of this article is to describe a research program for engineering nursing knowledge that has resulted in the development of such a tool, a prototype computer system for storing, managing, and modeling research-knowledge. The system is called ARKS, acronym for A Research-Knowledge System.